The National Assembly has transmitted the constitutional amendment bill seeking to establish state police to Nigeria’s 36 State Houses of Assembly for consideration and approval.
Conveyed via a letter signed by the Clerk to the National Assembly, Kamoru Ogunlana, the draft—officially known as the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (Sixth Alteration) Bill, 2026—is the only constitutional reform proposal to pass both chambers of the 10th National Assembly so far.
In line with Section 9 of the 1999 Constitution, at least 24 of the 36 state assemblies (two-thirds) must approve the bill for the amendment to succeed.
The Clerk urged state assemblies to complete their consideration and report back within 30 days, though he emphasized that this timeline is administrative rather than a strict constitutional limit.
The Senate passed President Bola Tinubu’s executive version of the bill on June 24. The House of Representatives followed suit on July 23 with a 311-member majority vote, after abandoning a previously passed House version to align with the executive draft.
If ratified by two-thirds of the states, the bill will introduce a decentralized policing architecture featuring operational framework, oversight, and administration for both federal and state police services.
